Lund’s Dairy was a popular milk delivery business in Thornton Heights. Originally established by Fred J. Lund, the business was later run by his son, John Lund. The Lund family was well respected in the community − locals talk fondly of how the Lunds helped their families during the Depression years. Contributed / South Portland Historical Society

We continue our look at some of the well-known residents of Thornton Heights about a century ago. We’ve talked about the Johnson farm at 628 Main St., where Carignan Avenue intersects today. John H. Johnson’s next-door neighbor was Fred J. Lund. Let’s take a look at Lund and the long-running dairy that he founded and ran with his son John.

Fred J. Lund was born in Denmark around 1869. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1886 and first settled in Westbrook, working for the S.D. Warren paper mill. Fred served in Company M in the 1st Maine Infantry during the Spanish-American War in 1898. In 1902, he married Mabel Greenlaw (who had also been working in the paper mill) and together they had two children: John and Agnes. In the 1910s, the Lunds moved to Scarborough where they bought a 38-acre farm on Broadturn Road.

In August of 1919, Fred and Mabel bought a 20-acre tract of land along Main Street in South Portland; the land had previously been part of the much larger Joseph Hunnewell farm of the early to mid-1800s (the Hunnewell farm had originally covered 100 acres in that area).

When the Lunds first bought the land, there were no buildings upon it and they lived and ran the business temporarily from a home at 793 Main St. They took out a mortgage on the 20 acres, however, and the mortgage included the “buildings to be placed thereon.” At least one of those buildings was apparently moved to the property. In a news story in the Portland Evening Express on Sept. 19, 1919, “Passenger service on the Saco line of the Portland Railroad Co. [trolley] was somewhat disarranged this forenoon when a house which was being moved by Fred J. Lund slipped from its carrier and blocked the tracks. It was necessary to transfer passengers as the cars could not get by the obstruction.”

Soon thereafter, the Lund family moved to a home at 648 Main St., next door to John H. Johnson, where they lived and operated their business. When Fred Lund first began bottling milk, he did so under his own name. Sometime in the early- to mid-1920s, he was also operating a candy store on his property. In 1925, Fred was offering house lots for sale.

Fred’s son John joined him in the business in the mid-1920s and the dairy became known as Fred J. Lund & Son. By the 1930s, the Lunds were now living in a home at 15 Thornton Ave., just around the corner. During WWII, as Fred started to step back from the business, they changed the company name to Lund’s Dairy. In 1947, Fred finally cut his ties to the business when he sold the land and buildings to John.

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John Lund continued operating Lund’s Dairy on his own through the 1950s, still bottling and pasteurizing the milk on Thornton Avenue. The dairy was well known throughout South Portland.

As “supermarkets” came on the scene and their popularity began to grow, with their appeal of one-stop shopping, small local grocers and home delivery companies began to suffer. Shaw’s Supermarket came to Mill Creek in 1951, followed by the Mill Creek Shopping Center strip mall in 1955. Lund’s Dairy continued to operate through the 1950s as this change in shopping habits began to take hold. In 1961, the business was failing and John had no options left except to file for bankruptcy. A judge ruled that the land and buildings had to be sold to pay creditors; that sale took place in February of 1962.

If you’d like to see more information and photographs related to Lund’s Dairy or other people and places from South Portland’s past, check out South Portland Historical Society’s free Online Museum with over 17,000 images available for viewing with a keyword search. You can find it at sphistory.pastperfectonline.com and, if you appreciate what we do, feel free to make a donation by using the donation button on the home page. If you have photographs or other information to share about our community’s past, we hope you will reach out to us. South Portland Historical Society can be reached at 207-767-7299, by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.

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